To say that nobody has tried to play the race card in the Democratic primary campaign thus far would be patently untrue.
But for all the accusations, I can only think of two times that the charge of race-baiting seemed to be valid: 1. When Obama’s national co-chair Jesse Jackson, Jr. suggested Hillary Clinton’s tears should be analyzed — that she didn’t cry for the Katrina victims, and 2. when Bill Clinton compared Obama’s win in SC to Jesse Jackson’s.
Everything else has struck me as media-driven hoopla.
Furthermore, to suggest that “Garbgate” was race-related (and to spend about a million words doing so) is downright silly.
The Drudge posting included reaction from the pinnacle of Obama’s campaign team. “It’s exactly the kind of divisive politics that turns away Americans of all parties and diminishes respect for America in the world,” said Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe, who also described the non-story as “the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we’ve seen from either party in this election” and “part of a disturbing pattern.” Although he never explicitly spelled out the contours of this pattern, he was clearly alluding to race baiting.
There’s definitely been a pattern, and the photograph on Drudge was absolutely part of it — but that particular pattern has nothing to do with race.
The fear-mongering to which Plouffe refers isn’t “scary black people”. It’s “scary Muslim people”, and one would have to live in a blue-tinged, pristine partisan bubble to not have noticed this going on in the frothingly paranoid elements on the far right.
Obviously, people are free to keep count of the fouls committed by both campaigns by whatever measure they choose. However, mentally merging race-baiting with religious fear-mongering makes for an exceedingly flawed argument.
There’s plenty of grist for the mills of aggrieved supporters all around — but please, pick out the weeds and weevils first.
Added: In case you still can’t understand what it was the Obama campaign was reacting to, here’s a dandy case in point from the Tennessee GOP. Evidently they missed the memo.
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